WHAT?! Such things should be considered blasphemous! Do they even know how many ladies they scored? How many hit songs they had? How awesome they were in general? It can NEVER be an insult. It's like saying fire isn't hot or earth's gravity makes you go up. Can't be done.

pwned-by-twilight wrote:Yeah, dA does have its share of trolls, sparkledogs, attention whores, etc., but it's still a respectable art site where even big time programmers, cartoonists and such post their work and where I can get my OCT action on! Then the fact most of the comic artists are there makes it hard to knock entirely. It can't be any worse or unorganized than 4chan, can it? *feels a sense of foresight that that last sentence is inviting a lecture*

DA's main problem is that its community is too organized. All that the badge and favoriting systems do, is that they discourage honest opinions about art. So people suck up to each other and the entire comment system is one giant "you scratch my back, I scratch yours" scenario. People favorite horrible art, because they know that in return their art will get favorited, and that results in even absolutely horrendous art getting 5-20 favorites, at least.

The fact that even the most pathetic attempts at art get praised, in turn, causes the place to be a safehaven for weeaboos, furry fetishists(the kind that genuinely believes being a furry is a "lifestyle"), teenage drama queens, hipsters, yaoi shippers, manpregs, inflations, vore fetishists and, worst of all, fanboys and fangirls. And all of them build their own little communities that circlejerk with each other for months. And so, if anyone ever posts an honest critical opinion, or even an obviously trolling critical opinion(that can be safely ignored) it always results in Internet drama. Even when an opinion is constructive criticism, the person that posts it must fear a ban, because the criticized will get the specific circlejerking community he belongs to, up in arms that there's a "mean troll" that needs reporting.

Yes there are famous people using DA, but those usually have a blog, a homepage, a twitter or whatever, where you can watch their stuff, too. DA is the most popular art site so it's bound to have famous users, but it doesn't mean it is a respectable art site. It just means that in the entire sea of garbage you can, at times, find high quality stuff, but if the vast majority is garbage, then the site, as a whole, is by no means "respectable".

Anyway, feel free to call me a weeaboo, and I probably am for bringing this up, but if you compare DA to Pixiv.net, Pixiv has numerous famous users, too(less than DA, but that's cause it's not in English). But more importantly, Pixiv has a proper rating system, which is anonymous. So in a scale of 1-10 whether your artwork is good or not, you will know that the opinions are honest, which is how it should be. Pixiv also has a bloody tag system, how a site like DA cannot have a proper tag system in 2011, is beyond me. Pixiv has a search function that actually works, DA's is attrocious. These all result in DA hosting, in general, a far worse level of artwork than Pixiv, period. That's not to say Pixiv doesn't have it's fair share of garbage, but those always get bad ratings and this is often enough to discourage bad artists to post, until they improve.

And the anonymity of the rating system on Pixiv brings me to my last point. You mentioned 4chan, I like imageboards(big ones anyway), and I like 4chan. That it's unorganized, is part of the fun. Everyone is anonymous(except tripfags obviously), so you get to read a lot of opinions and thoughts you'd never read if you were on an Internet forum or a social network. Sure it's unprotected and you may end up seeing nasty stuff(especially on /b/), but it teaches you to not take the Intenet seriously and that internet arguments and shitstorms are all ulimately pointless, which is something everyone should learn. It's something, I wish I had learned way sooner than I did.

Also when people think 4chan they usually think /b/ which is a somewhat unfair generalization. There's a ton of boards and most of them have their own unique atmosphere. Some of the most fun discussions I've had on the Internet were on /a/, /lit/ and to a lesser extent /jp/.

Stanisław Lem wrote:I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet.

Totally saw this coming... But not in the least am I mad, peeved, or flustered. It's pretty hard to get me angry actually, so don't ever worry about going down on me.

I've always been told about this "scratch=scratch" scenario, and I have seen it sometimes, but mostly it's just with llamas now. As for watches and faves, I'm very critical about these things. I don't click that fave or watch button unless what's attached to what I click actually interests me. No freebies.

And I've seen this one too, still not as much as the hype leads on as I've seen. But again I'm everywhere, so crack-slippage from my vision is a possibility. Again, like my faves, my praise is not for sale. If I like something, I'll say why or what it made me think of. If something strikes me as odd or wrong, I'll say so. And over all, my opinion about one thing or another will be spoken... unless someone's already voiced said opinion, then I'd be doing something unoriginal. When it comes to the art, I'm just thinking about the art. I don't fave art because I like someone, but usually these people I've seen who have work that interest me get me to come back and fave their work every once in a while. If the person is a prick or doesn't pay attention to their fans, it doesn't make the art any less good. (like how Thriller still rocks even though MJ was... MJ) Also, throughout my years on dA, even if I was called something close to a fag, troll, weeabo, etc. through my hopefully positive crits or expressed concerns, I always "magically turned it around" or was deemed not worth the other person's time (these people usually being legitimate trolls or just spiteful folk about one subject). Heck, I've even befriended trolls through this, or other people by explaining my point of view. I don't know how I've survived with how you say some like me would be exiled by hordes of supporters of someone I criticized, but I have... And looking back on the crits I've given, that's saying a lot. *thinks this bit is too wordy, but don't know how to word it better at the moment, so...*

You're totally right about it not being "respectful" for famous people being there though, I give you that. Don't really know why I thought that... I guess it was the thought that if these people are here, there must be something right going on here. I still see plenty of awesome in my eyes though, but then I'm an inspiring artist who finds interest in more than others would.

And HECK YEAH! If I could read Japanese, I'd definitely be a part of Pixiv. There's so much I already love from there, but since I can't speak the lingo, most of it is lost to me so far. It's just sad more people can't be sincere without being anonymous. It shouldn't hurt to give an opinion, but then everyone isn't me, so everyone has their tolerances... I just can't understand how though, since I should be the prime example of someone with low tolerance in life. But I don't. As for the blamming of bad art... Damn... How does that work exactly? If someone gets anonymously voted down to submission, how does that encourage someone to get better on their own outside the site without feedback?

I've BEEN to 4chan before, but never really participated, like for the longest time I didn't here. But I've already seen some pretty crazy sheet outside of 4chan, so not much else can gross me out like with what I've seen... *remembers "the picture..."* But I can see how it can be fun. It's just that things seem more interesting if they last, and I've always seen that threads deleted left and right, even good ones, so the cool thing I saw five minutes ago could be gone like THAT! Or that long looked for pic I tried to find to show everyone or a comment I thought hard to put together ends up going poof. With the latter, I have to say I put a lot of thought in every single one of my posts, either here or on dA, so the fickle business is the only thing that nags at me. I like things more organized and concrete I guess... Which is why I like dA, despite the shortcomings other people deem as intolerable. But that's me saying I'm not bothered by fangirls/boys, furries, yaoi (sometimes... because it can make me laugh sometimes), etc. I'm just very flexible.

Just to note, I'm not really defending dA, I'm just expressing what I think of things, be they negative or positive to what I like. I'm a very agreeable dood who tries to see the brighter side of things though.

P.S. needed to add this question: what's this "tag system" of Pixiv's that you mentioned?

Glad to hear Shark Robot is just powering through and up, Dave. How long till your ban from Canada lifts? xD

Pixiv has an English GUI now. Not that it helps much, if you're Japanese illiterate, since all the tags and comments are still in Japanese.

Also, the tag system works like Danbooru, and sort of like youtube. When you upload a submission, you tag the piece. say "original" when it's original, or you tag the name of the series it's a fanart of. You tag the character's name, the character's nickname, the sort of action going on in it, some sort of short phrase that resembles the work, w/e. Make a whole bunch of these.

People can then make a search such as "original", and the site can filter out all the art that is not tagged "original". You can filter with multiple tags at once, and the tags are clickable at the top of every submission so you can click into related tags, etc.

Also, when you favourite a piece, you can tag it for your own use inside of your favourites folder (so, suppose I favourite a lot of pictures of girls with glasses. I might write my own tag for "meganekko" when favouriting ones, if the artist hadn't already tagged it with that, so when I look at my favourites I can find all the glasses girl pics at once).

Finally, when you favourite something, it'll search out similar pictures via the tags you enabled, so there's a chance that you'll get stuck in this long loop of "related pics" and find lots of cool art.

Really, I find the best part about pixiv to be it's narrow scope. It's for primarily visual illustration, traditional or digital. The large majority is fanwork, but there's space and niche for other weird things too, like military hardware, abstract arts, etc. Which is quite unlike dA, which tries to blanket cover all "art", so you end up with a bunch of photography, GUI designs, poetry, architectural blueprints, w/e.

Pixiv lets you just find illustrations related to what you want instantly. No sifting through random photoshops, camfaggot photos, w/e.

Plus, it has an explicitly R-18 and R-18G filtering built in, so you know, people who want to draw porn, can. People who don't want to see it, won't. And if you like porn, but not gore, you can filter that out automatically too. Etc.

pwned-by-twilight wrote:As for the blamming of bad art... Damn... How does that work exactly? If someone gets anonymously voted down to submission, how does that encourage someone to get better on their own outside the site without feedback?

It doesn't work in any specific way, it's just a rating system in a 1-10 scale. It's just that some people leave if they get low ratings on multiple submissions. That's all there is to it. That's how many of the Western users get chased off in fact, those with badly photoshopped edits mostly.

As for feedback, most pixiv users have fc2 hosted blogs set as homepages, so comments usually go there.

Jay already explained the tag system, so I won't be repeating what he said with my poor vocabulary.

Stanisław Lem wrote:I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet.

@Jay: Hmm, it sort of sounds like a pleasant mixture of Paheal.rule34's and HF's tag/search entries (both actually pornographic sites I frequent...) with a touch of T.V. Tropes addictablility. It's sounds pretty nifty, and makes me want to be a part of it even more. I just... could never find the damn button that enlarges the images... FFFF!

And how could a country ban a man like Dave? He's harmless.

@Rival: I guess I worded this wrong as well. But then I didn't know they actually did have a comment system along with the ranking, so I retract the question. Since I don't read Japanese, I never knew tey had it. I was just afraid that someone getting a bad review despite trying to do legitimate art is supposed to get positive feedback to improve without just that.

And I don't know what to say, Twilight. Check your pop-up blocker? Are you logged in? Pixiv is (or at least used to be) a little bit exclusive, so viewing images I think used to require an account before. Dunno about now.

Seeing bigger versions on other sites means the people who uploaded that piece that the artist uploaded on pixiv knew how to view the full size.

Zeph do you ever tire of being perfect? ~DaveZeph is still awesome though. ~RivalI love you so much right now Zeph. ~YoshiI love you Zeph. You and your simple yet humorous topic-breakers. ~CoosZeph has left me inspired. ~MathiasZeph is so awesome even soulless bits of binary worship him. ~WizardCurse YOU ZEPH! CURSE YOU! ~JesusChristWE ARE SORRY THAT WE ARE NOT AS PERFECT AS YOU, ZEPH! ~StufflikeheartsZepherin for forum queen and writer of the best seller "how to screw your brethen up for dummies". ~ The Mirak

Dave wrote:SUPER sorry everyone. SharkRobot is owning my life right now. But it's a good thing promise. Business is booming and it's getting bigger every year. But I'm REALLY failing on making comics. But I'm in the process of hiring another artist so hopefully we can get some more of my comics going soon.

The upside is things really are starting to not need me so much at SharkRobot so hopefully I can focus on Snafu again soon. Sorry again for neglecting my Snafu duties. But they're being neglected for really good reason. We've never been doing better. But managing several companies at once is stressful and time consuming.

Dave, are you living off it now? Or are you still doing web design stuff?